Stoss' Home » Signs

The Scary Side

Stoss — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:11:55 +0000

Sometimes advertisers don’t seem to understand how things will look or read after they spend their 9-5 day creating the ads.

JD and Their Ducks

It’s very good that Jack Daniel’s would like to let us know about their expert quality controllers. I am sure they provide a lot of benefit to the end product. However, I am very very unsure how employing ducks could in anyway improve the quality of a fine American Whiskey.

I also would like to ask a few questions to the makers of Old No7:

Was the ducks involvement in the process limited to any particular component? Perhaps ducks have taste buds that can discern between a quality and a shitty whiskey. This is a fact I would expect to see on Wikipedia.

Can ducks hold their alcohol? I suspect that due to size restrictions on a duck the tasting of alcohol could lead to severe drunkeness and perhaps odd duck-behaviour. How do you slur a quack?

Does anyone look at this and see a severe case of some communicable disease? There are clearly disease sores covering this person’s lips.

I am also not sure why lips were chosen for this ad. Is it not common knowledge that taste buds are on your tongue?

And what is wrong with this person’s face. usually the chin kinda “rounds off” below the mouth, here it looks like Jay Leno’s chin if he portrayed Carrie.

Do I have something on my lips?

Gremlin Earth man to the rescue

Why must every product or ad have a mascot? It isn’t necessary and all it causes is people trying to come up with something “new and clever”.

Unfortunately as Hollywood proves with every single movie they release since Usual Suspects “new and clever” means attempting to combine a couple ideas into one and passing it off as unique.

Exhibit A: Scary Gremlin Earth man. How the hell can a mutant earth with a patch of “ice cap” hair and zits be considered a mascot to help conserve energy?

Aside from the disturbing image of the puffy eye’d monster with Africa as a goatee, I don’t think with a hairpiece that bad you can even pass off as “receding” anymore, you are pretty freakin’ bald!

Marketing 101

Stoss — Sun, 31 May 2009 16:44:10 +0000

Today I show you some advertisements that came from marketing departments that are seemingly run by monkeys who are either 40 years older or younger than their target audience and/or have IQs in the single digits.

Is it McDonald's?

This ad advertises that mayonnaise and chicken “is McDonald’s”. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t the definition of McDonald’s the Big Mac? aka Beef, not chicken?And what does “… and then some” mean? Is there some delineation of “being McDonald’s” that I am unaware of? Does it start at “Excellent Food” (ie. Not McDonald’s at all) and ends at “Obese fatass rednecks”?

I think the only thing that makes sense on this ad is that it is less than £1.

I also like that the burger that they are advertising isn’t even completely on the billboard!

This ad starts off with a “clever” joke, reminiscent of the bug’s ass flying through his head when he hits your windshield. But the point of this ad is to tell people to use caution on stairs.Few things:

This ad was ON THE STAIRWAY! If I want to be warned about a hazard I would like to be done so before I am in the middle of using the device or apparatus that it is warning me about! A warning on the blades of a mower that says don’t touch when spinning isn’t useful if the blades are already spinning!
One would assume the main demographic for this ad is either the elderly or drunk people… unless we live in a country of moronic middle class 20-50 somethings… Therefore using a semi-inappropriate joke which is not only a lot of reading but may take a second to register doesn’t seem like a great way to get the message across! How about CAUTION STAIRS?
Doesn’t the black sillouhette look like the “Slppery When Wet” guy upside down?

Caution: Stairs Require Skill

A true statement

Marmite is a horrible product. I was given the stuff when I first moved here and it tasted like I was licking the foot of an avid hiker who has an unexplained love of stepping in feces and has just spent a month trekking across the Andes.

However this ad is not clever like “Buckley’s: It tastes awful, but it works”. Negative Advertising is fine, and sometimes is effective. But this ad isn’t a negative advertising example. It is stating the absolute obvious. I could put anything on this billboard, from pizza to terrorism and the same statement would be true.

It is also a tad obvious that the suitcase is being held at that ridiculous and, might I add, unusable angle so that the thumb can bias you towards a positive reaction.

Don’t buy marmite.

Pics For Thought

Stoss — Sat, 23 May 2009 18:41:21 +0000

A few more day-to-day pictures:

Enjoying it while I can
The above comic was sent to me after my blog posts on Mr. Keen’s book about Internet media destroying society. The big-nosed guy on the right makes an interesting point, there will always be a need for writers no matter where we read our news. Interestingly enough, does anyone else notice the bomb on the hippy on th left’s computer? I am not sure if this is a subtle addition by the author that all Internt news readers are terrorists, or if it just a poorly drawn apple. I am hoping it is the later, otherwise I’ll have to learn how to handle anthrax.
A polite indicator	I want to thank the construction company for politely letting me know that if I am planning an emergency, that there is a spot ahead for me to stop and attend to that emergency. By definition isn’t an emergency something that is unplanned or unforeseen? For instance if the car I was in when I took this picture caught on fire, do you really think I would think to myself “Well, shit… I am not near an official emergency stopping area, guess I’ll keep on plugging forward?” Aside from the stupidity of this sign, I wonder how much this sign cost tax payers? I would also love to see statistics on how many people actually use these official stopping areas. Why does no one seem to realize when doing construction budgets how much of a waste things like this are? Let’s from now on spend money on paying the workers to get the work done faster so that “construction season” doesn’t run into winter.
This was a laminated pamphlet sitting on the table of a Toronto restaurant I was eating at. Making a leap I am assuming this was advertising something grown locally. I am not aware of what that plant is, but this was a pamphlet for wine and I am pretty positive this is not a grape vine or a wine barrel. Also I am kinda sure that ripping a plant out, roots and all, from the ground is not a sound gardening practice. What gets me is: Who would think that this graphic a) indicates wine b) makes me want to purchase wine or c) tricks people into thinking that Toronto has dirt and plants? I did not take any marketing classes, but based on my knowledge of print and tv ads the only appropriate place for dirt as a marketing device is for washing detergent, and even then only if you are advertising how it whitens, not how it protects colours. For the later you would want bright clothes that have been washed 100s of times indicated as a caption on your ad. I did not have wine with this meal.	Dirt, an interesting sales strategy

Pics are worth $$$

Stoss — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:43:47 +0000

A recent bit of feedback from a friend and fellow blogger is that my posts lack a certain graphical appeal. I therefore have decided to introduce a recurring feature to this site where I use the power of my Blackberry’s camera to bring you interesting things I encounter on my day-to-day adventures.

Today’s edition is Silly Signs:

An interesting advertisement. I saw this in my local train station. Apparently a very hip dog (hip due to the cool specs) has somehow made it to the Taj Mahal and realized he needs a passport.I, of course, would encourage all travelers to sort out passports before going to see India, but each to their own.I am not sure what is more odd. The fact he has 1 ear, a face shaped like an arrow or that he has a camera around his neck, but yet no opposable thumbs to click the button.

I am not sure who decided this advertisement would work, but smoking some of that crack might be fun.

I will make a note, that I have no idea what this is advertising.

On my recent trip to Germany I had a layover in Zurich, this sign was seen on the shuttle bus to my plane.Apparently in Switzerland it is not only encouraged that you smoke on a shuttle bus, but that you smoke several different types of tobacco.However the artist did forget to paint the smoke lines on the pipe, so maybe I should just carry an un-lit pipe Sherlock Holmes style.

For a country that smokes more cigarettes in an hour than most countries do in a year, I guess it makes sense that you are allowed to have one last sweet taste of nicotine before the 1 hour 20 minute flight from Zurich to Heathrow.

That is all for now. I hope that this satisfies the apparent lust for imagery my readers have.